American Ads, American Values

Neal McDonough is one of those actors who send you scrambling to the Internet whenever they turn up—you recognize him, but you’re not sure why. In the Cadillac commercial “Poolside,” which first aired during the Olympics, McDonough portrays a Type A American achiever. He briskly navigates his family’s manse, high-fiving one of his unsmiling daughters, passing his wife the morning paper like a baton in a relay race, and donning a sharp suit before heading outside to unplug his Cadillac ELR. When I reviewed McDonough’s long list of credits, I realized that I knew him from “Desperate Housewives,” on which he played the murderous schemer Dave Williams. Perhaps it’s this association that makes his Cadillac-driving paterfamilias seem vaguely sociopathic.

Or maybe it’s just his monologue: McDonough’s character tells us that people in other countries “stroll home, they stop by the café, they take August off,” but that, in America, “we’re crazy-driven, hard-workin’ believers” who earn our luck. That “we” implicates the audience, turning us all into wildly ambitious vacation-shunners, for whom shimmery pools, well-appointed houses, and luxury cars are our due. Depending on your own beliefs, it’s either a bracing evocation of the American work ethic or a paean to ruthless careerism and the American superiority complex. Adam Gopnik called it “the single most obnoxious television ad ever made.”

Associating products with certain values is a tactic practically as old as advertising itself. In addition to Cadillac, Chili’s and Coca-Cola have recently contributed ads of this type. Chipotle, as I’ve written before, markets itself on the basis of a sincere, if imperfect, effort to avoid factory-farmed ingredients; Panera promotes its community involvement and preference for antibiotic-free meat and poultry; in Chrysler’s 2012 Super Bowl ad, Clint Eastwood assured a recession-weary nation of American resilience. Values-based ads may or may not sell products, but they do offer insight into how companies perceive their customers. And our reaction to them says a great deal about how we perceive ourselves.

In an interview with Michael McCarthy, of Ad Age, Cadillac’s advertising director, Craig Bierley, said that “Poolside” was pitched at consumers who earn around two hundred thousand dollars a year, people with a “little bit of grit under their fingernails” who “pop in and out of luxury.” He also said, “These are people who haven’t been given anything. Every part of success they’ve achieved has been earned through hard work and hustle.” (A Cadillac spokesman declined a request for further comment on Bierley’s behalf.) Whether Bierley’s description of members of that income bracket is accurate—and research about economic mobility suggests that it isn’t—it’s certainly a story rich people often believe about themselves.

Last week, Chili’s posted an online ad called “More Life Happens Here,” which promotes its commitment to “compassion, kinship, and a sense of something greater.” This notion of American values differs from Cadillac’s. The spot showcases Chili’s community engagement—afamiliartactic—including food donations, disaster relief, and its support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“There’s a growing number of socially conscious consumers, and they’re seeking brands that have a powerful purpose and looking for those brands that share similar values,” Krista Gibson, the chief marketing officer at Chili’s, told me. Although Gibson said that the ad wasn’t produced with a particular demographic in mind, a comparison with the Cadillac ad reveals a great deal: instead of a family of strivers zooming through a sprawling house, we see dads and daughters bonding over burgers; a modest family birthday party; folks on cots, presumably after a natural disaster; a soldier’s homecoming. It’s a vision of community tailored to appeal to middle-class families that patronize casual chain restaurants.

In Coke’s ad “It’s Beautiful,” which débuted during this year’s Super Bowl, sweet treble voices sing “America the Beautiful” in several languages, as Americans from a variety of backgrounds share tender moments: sisters eat popcorn at the movies, friends dance, a family camps, two dads roller-skate with their daughter. Coke has presented itself as the quintessentially American soft drink for decades, but its multilingual celebration of American diversity outraged some conservatives, who railed that patriotic songs should be sung only in English. Despite the outcry from noisy bigots, many people were moved: the ad has been viewed more than eleven million times on YouTube. As Amy Davidson observed, “There is an extent to which a company can, with an ad, invite a little bit of national reflection. In that respect, the Coke ad was helpful; it was, in the better sense, patriotic.” In a press release, Katie Bayne, Coca-Cola’s president of North America Brands, said that the ad celebrates “the diversity that makes this country great and the fact that anyone can thrive here and be happy.”

But “It’s Beautiful” doesn’t just offer a lovely vision of American diversity; it’s carefully constructed to sell sweet carbonated drinks to a particular audience. In the Guardian, Jill Filipovic argues that Coke, like some other manufacturers of unhealthy products, markets aggressively to minority communities. “Coke’s targeting of Latino and other immigrant populations is about as progressive as RJ Reynolds marketing menthol cigarettes to African-Americans or Phillip Morris hawking Virginia Slims to women—that is, not very,” she writes.

By evoking an idealized version of America, one in which we truly love our neighbors as ourselves, Chili’s and Coke invite us to feel virtuous when we consume their products. But, in a country whose enduring cultural myths include Horatio Alger and the Welfare Queen, the idea that material success is a high aim and primarily a function of hard work is also deeply entrenched and, importantly, politically powerful.

McDonough’s character, after surveying his property, ends the ad by saying, “That’s the upside of only taking two weeks off in August.” Many Americans lack any paid time off, and those who have it routinely leave vacation days unused, often blaming a heavy workload. Few workers have access to paid family leave. More than twenty per cent of kids in the U.S. are living in poverty. Yet last week Paul Ryan rallied his base by attacking subsidized school lunches. I suspect that’s one of the reasons Cadillac’s ad is so galling for its critics: it gets at a truth about American values they would prefer to dismiss as marketing spin.